Attila

by William Napier

  The houses the length of the Via Salaria were put to the torch, to light the army’s way into the heart of the city. And once there, amid the seven hills, many of Rome’s great towers and palaces were brought down in ashes and dust. The Palace of Sallust on the Quirinal Hill, beside the Baths of Diocletian, that architectural jewel containing the unnumbered treasures of Numidia, and every miracle of the jeweller’s and goldsmith’s, the painter’s and the sculptor’s art, was fired and destroyed in a single night, its contents vanished for ever. Likewise the palace of the fabulously wealthy Anician clan was seen from afar off, aflame in the night. Wagons piled high with gold and silver, silks and ornaments and purples, were soon trundling out of the gates towards the Gothic camp.

  In the Forum, the mighty statues of the heroes of Rome were roped and pulled down by rearing horses and their drunken, whooping riders. In the fiery light of the burning buildings, those monuments of the ages came crashing to the ground: Aeneas and the early rulers of Rome, the honoured generals of the Carthaginian and Macedonian campaigns, the deified emperors, great Hadrian and Trajan themselves. Even Caesar’s solemn mask, melting into the flames as he if were no more a man of bronze but only a pitiful figurine of wax . . .

  Some of the wealthier citizens fled ahead of the invaders, and sought refuge on the little isle of Igilium, off the Argentarian promontory. The woods there grew thick with huddled and hungry refugees, still strangely attired in rich robes and gold-embroidered dalmatics. But on those summer nights they shivered like any beggar in his rags, to see Rome burn across the bay, and all their vaunted wealth go up in smoke. Others took ship for Africa or Egypt; still others took the veil. But none truly escaped the wrath of those days.

  In Hippo, on the African coast, Bishop Augustine began to brood about the meaning of the Sack of Rome, and to contemplate the writing of his great masterpiece, The City of God. For the city of mankind’s longing must be a city that endures for ever, a celestial Rome. For here we have no abiding city . . .

  And in Bethlehem in far-off Palestine, Holy Jerome in his sky-lit cell wept at the news that the world was at an end. ‘My voice is choked with sobs as I write these words,’ he lamented. ‘The city that conquered the world is now herself conquered.’

  He also wrote, in a letter to a friend, a line that has become famous throughout the world. ‘All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.’

  The Goths stayed only six days in the city before their creaking covered wagons rolled out again, laden with the treasures of half the world. Alaric marched south, his thirst for gold and glory not yet wholly appeased, and his Gothic horde sacked the city of Capua, the proud, sybaritic and luxurious capital of Campania. Along the Neapolitan coast, that playground of the rich and powerful for centuries, even the gorgeous villas of Cicero and Lucullus were filled with long-limbed Goths reclining on silk-upholstered couches, quaffing huge bejewelled goblets of the finest Falernian, and rejoicing in their mastery of the world. In their drunken vainglory, these haughty German warriors forgot that there were still other tribes - and one tribe in particular - that might envy them their easy conquest of Rome.

  Alaric marched south again for Messina, his eyes on the rich pickings of Sicily just across the straits. But the weather was by then turning rough, with late summer and early autumn storms, and rising Sirius presiding as always over the season of storms that sailors have dreaded since man first presumed to travel in Neptune’s realm. And that very night, after a fine banquet in his palatial tent, cooked for him by his boasted new Roman chef, Alaric was suddenly taken ill with some mysterious form of poisoning, and died. His chef had in fact been a gift from the household of Princess Galla Placidia herself . . .

  The unfortunate creator of the banquet was put to death, just to be on the safe side. And Alaric was given a burial fit for a conqueror and king. His generals, with massive slave labour from the neighbouring townships, diverted the River Busentius from the walls of Consentia, buried their lamented king in a triple casket in the muddy riverbed, then returned the river to its course. All those who had worked on the burial were slain, and to this day the exact place of Alaric’s burial has not been discovered. Doubtless it never will be.

  To unanimous acclaim, Alaric’s capable, vigorous, taciturn younger brother, Athawulf, was made king in his stead. And the Gothic nation, abandoning its dreams of conquering Sicily, which seemed to them fore-damned, returned northwards to Rome. And there, to general astonishment, and not a little sardonic laughter, it was soon announced to the populace of the city, and to the Gothic nation, that King Athawulf, as a sign of the new concord that now existed between the Gothic and Roman peoples, would take as his bride the beautiful Princess Galla Placidia, sister to Emperor Honorius, and a spotless virgin of only twenty-two summers.

  9

  THE RUINS OF ITALY

  Throughout these tumultuous days for Rome - her last days, so it seemed - the Palatine Guard continued to hunt for the barbarian boy with the slanting eyes and the blue, scarred, tattooed cheeks, on his arduous flight through the ruins of Italy.

  The boy fought on, hunted all the way.

  His ancient mule died under him so he stole a horse. He rode that horse to death in a single day, and the next sunrise he stole another. He could cover a hundred miles between dawn and dusk, or as often by night, riding through the dense woods of the Italian mountains, only coming down into the more populous valleys to steal. He survived through anarchy and war, fighting sometimes like a cornered animal against vagrants or bandits or deserter soldiers with lust or cruelty in their eyes. He fought, cheated and lied his way through the flames of Roman devastation, and with every victory that he won he grew stronger. He was happier in those desperate weeks than he had ever been during the years of boredom and bitterness in the safe and perfumed courts of Rome.

  He had always before him the prospect of his own country: the beloved, windy plains of Scythia, the broad, winding rivers and the vast, dense pine forests, the tents of black felt and the wagons where his people encamped. The boar hunts, the wolf hunts, the blue skies of summer and the terrible snow-bound winters. And he rode with a happy heart, through the chaos and ruins of Italy, heading north, back to his tribal homeland. Nothing could destroy him. Not lightning, not bandits, not street bullies, not hunger or thirst, not summer sun or winter snow, not even great Rome itself. He was one with his father Astur and with the immortal gods of heaven, and when he killed he felt he could create as easily and with as much pleasure as he destroyed. For that is the way of the unknown and changeful gods.

  He did not always travel alone. One chill autumn morning he awoke to find, to his annoyance, that a crook-backed old man had crept into the woodland glade where he had camped without his hearing. The ancient stranger was stooped over his camp-fire, piled afresh with dry twigs, and was blowing new life into it through his bony, liver-spotted hands.

  The old man eyed the boy impassively as he scrambled from his blankets and reached for his sword. He was bearded and his face, with its beaked nose and deep-set eyes, was grim and without humour. When he spoke his voice was a hoarse rasp from disuse, as is the way with hermits and solitaries.

  ‘No need for a sword, boy. Not in these Latter Days.’

  Attila laid his sword aside uncertainly, and approached the stranger. ‘Your name?’ he demanded.

  ‘A servant of the servants of God.’

  ‘That’s not a name.’

  The old man said irritably, looking back at the fire, ‘John, then, if thou must. Unworthy as I am to share a name with the fourth evangelist.’ He crossed himself. ‘Now give me food.’

  ‘I have none.’

  ‘Thou liest.’

  The boy was becoming irritated in turn. ‘I do not lie.’

  ‘And what are those markings on thy face? Those unChristian daubings that stain thy visage in the manner of the most wretched and unhallowed of barbarians?’

  Attila touched his fingertips to his cheeks. ‘My bi
rth-tattoos,’ he said, ‘cut by my mother ten days to the hour from the day my birth-cord was cut. After ten days had passed, it was known that the gods would not call me back to the Everlasting Blue Sky.’

  The old man looked at him with dawning horror. At last he sprang to his feet and seized the boy’s arms in his skinny, claw-like fingers. His eyes were rheumy and watery with age. ‘The Lord God of Israel save thee, and all the apostles save thee, and all the saints save thee, and the Mother of God intercede for thee, and save thee as a brand plucked from the burning! For thou art in mortal danger of eternal hell-fire!’ He threw his head back and cried to heaven, ‘O Lord, have mercy on this Christless and unshriven soul!’

  The boy shook the madman free with some effort, for his grip was like that of a hawk on its prey. ‘I have no need of your Christ,’ he retorted.

  Holy John reeled back as if from a blow, and put his hands to his ears.

  ‘Astur my father sees all and judges all. I am not afraid of the day of his judgement of me.’

  ‘What is this new diabolical name? What is this daemon?’ cried Holy John, his voice becoming hysterical. ‘Surely there are more daemons in the earth than there are birds in the sky! Oh, save us! Name him not in my presence, for to name a daemon is to summon him!’ Once again, he seized Attila, this time by the hem of his ragged tunic. Attila eyed him with something approaching disgust, and let him rant. ‘There is a she-daemon of similar name, worshipped in Syria with the foulest and most depraved rites known to man or beast, in the Groves of Ashta—Oh, but I dare not speak her name. Her eyes burn like the fires of Gehenna, and on her front she has an hundred breasts.’

  ‘Astur is the name of the god of my people,’ said the boy coldly, ‘and if you insult him you insult me and my people and the thirty generations of my ancestors who sprang from his seed.’

  ‘Boy, thou dost not understand!’ howled Holy John. ‘Thy ancestors burn in hell, every one of them, even as we dally on this accursed mountainside. And thou thyself art in mortal danger of burning likewise.’

  Attila spoke very slowly, his eyes never leaving Holy John’s contorted face. ‘You are telling me,’ he said, ‘that my mother, who died when I was still an infant at her breast, now burns for ever in your eternal Christian hell?’

  ‘Oh, most assuredly,’ wailed Holy John. ‘Her very flesh, and those very breasts that gave you suck, her soft and perfumed womanly hair, her lissom limbs and her shapely womanly buttocks are kissed by the hellish flames, and all, all consumed daily in the irremediable torments of the damned.’

  The boy had already retrieved his scabbard and drawn his sword. ‘Leave me now,’ he said quietly.

  ‘That I shall not!’ cried Holy John. ‘The Lord God of Hosts Himself hath led me here this day, to make a glorious conquest of thy soul! And conquer it for Christ I shall, ere the sun hath—’

  Attila put the point of his sword to the wrinkled and sagging wattles of the old man’s throat. ‘I said, leave.’

  ‘I fear thee not, thou daemoniac sinner,’ cried Holy John, trembling nevertheless with something that resembled fear. ‘I fear not them that can destroy the body, but only them that can destroy the soul!’

  ‘Then you are a fool,’ said the boy. ‘Even the smallest child among my people could tell you that the body and soul are not two separate things, nor can the soul be taken out of the body like a plumstone out of a plum. Rather the soul and the body are one, like, like’ - he searched for an image - ‘like the sun and the sunset it makes.’

  Holy John stared at the boy and began to moan, a deep wail of lamentation rising from his belly.

  The boy pricked the point of his sword a little further into the sagging throat. ‘Now go,’ he said. And with a faint smile he added, ‘And may Our Father, Astur, have mercy on your soul.’

  Mention of the daemonic name worked where the sword had not. With a howl Holy John turned and fled from the glade, his hands to his ears and his long and filthy skirts flapping round his skinny, mottled legs.

  It began to rain. The boy broke camp, mounted up and rode from the glade.

  Even then, Holy John had not altogether finished with him. From the shelter of the trees, from where he had been spying on the boy, he called after him, ‘You ride under the wings of daemons, boy!’

  Attila did not turn round. Instead he bowed his head, muttered, ‘Then let it be,’ and rode on into the rain.

  He rode up into the mountains, among the tall pines, their resinous scent fresh on the wind and the damp air. High on an exposed ridge he rode into his first flurry of snow. The flakes settled and then quickly melted on his forearms and on his horse’s mane.

  At night he built a rough shelter of pine branches and huddled in his single blanket, sick with longing. He ached with cold and loneliness. But even when he fell asleep his teeth remained clenched. For he scorned even his own sorrow.

  He set horsehair snares for rabbits, watching out for their twilight runs at evening. He boiled up bird-lime from grass-grains and holly leaves, and he smeared the lime on the higher branches of trees to trap birds. Each one when roasted over the fire was little more than a mouthful; he ate them bones and all. He had better success with a wickerwork fish-trap he made from hazel twigs, and he gorged on baked river-fish till he could eat no more.

  As the year deepened in its colours into autumn, he found enough wild fruit, seeds and nuts to sustain him. He knew how to bite away the nourishing skin of rosehips without digging deeper into the irritant hairs in the centre. He knew how to bake a pine cone just long enough for it to crack open and give up the tasty kernels within. And he certainly knew how to skin and gut a rabbit, and roast it on a spit of alderwood. He grew lean and far-eyed, but he knew he would survive.

  But there came an evening when he could find nothing to eat. He had fished in a lake all day with pegged-out lines and baited hooks of hawthorn, without success, and his belly felt light with sadness and emptiness. He sat his horse on a rocky outcrop and looked down into a neat little valley below, and saw the torches and rushlights of a village burning. He even thought he could hear the sound of laughter and coarse-voiced song. He slipped from his horse and led it down into the valley.

  10

  THE VILLAGE

  It was no more than a circle of wooden huts round a well, with a big haybarn to one side and an ancient timber longhouse to another. His ears had heard aright: there was laughter and song, and they came from the longhouse.

  He tethered his horse in the shadows at the edge of the wood, and crept over to the longhouse. Pulling himself up on an upended chopping block, he craned to see through the open window.

  Inside a feast of abundance met his eyes. His stomach felt more pitifully hollow than ever, and his mouth flooded with forlorn expectation. Within the building sat the entire population of the village, as many as a hundred peasants with rubicund faces, laughing and singing, drinking and gorging themselves in celebration, by the light of a score of rush torches. It was too late for the harvest celebrations, surely; but in the country districts, it was well-known that an excuse was found for a drunken celebration at least once a week, especially as the year sank into the gloomier months of winter.

  Clay wine pitchers were being passed around, and flat osier baskets piled high with rolls of coarse but wholesome bread. Two great pigs, fattened up beautifully on the acorns that they had foraged in the oakwoods in the hills for the past few weeks, were turning golden-brown and shiny with fat on the blackened iron spits. The face of the gasping turnspit at their side was almost as golden-brown and greasy as they, but he was grinning from ear to ear at the thought of all that delicious roast pork to come, the flesh juicy and slightly nutty to the taste.

  Huge bowls of clay or olivewood bore mounds of steaming winter vegetables, roast parsnips and turnips, roast chestnuts, winter kale, bowls of lentils cooked with soft goat’s cheese, various kinds of cured hams and sausages, roast and boiled partridge and pigeon from the woods, and after that apples, pears, aprico
ts and plums in abundance, their skins shining plumply in the torchlight.

  Suddenly the barn door beside him flew open, and the boy froze. There appeared a plump, middle-aged woman, wheezing out in the cold night air, her face glowing with good food and rather too much wine. Oblivous of the boy standing as still as a statue on the chopping block, she leant one hand against the barn wall, squatted down, hitched up her voluminous skirts, and began to pee noisily. When she had finished, she wiped herself with the hem of her skirts, and heaved herself upright. Only when she turned round did she see the boy frozen there, and give a little gasp of fright.

  ‘Jove bless us and save us, I thought you was a robber or something.’ She peered at him more closely. ‘What you doing out on a raw night like tonight?’ She pushed his shoulder and turned him to face her. ‘Looking hungrily in at our feast like a wolf off the hills, are you? Or maybe eyeing our young daughters - though you hardly look old enough for that kind of caper.’ And she gave a great belly laugh.